Aristotelis Loukas does not look like a farmer, nor for that matter does he sound like one.

He is working as a farmer, and even dresses like a farmer - but then the overalls and hat do not quite fit: too tight, too new, not clothes in which he looks comfortable.

When we meet, in the hill-country north of Thessaloniki, Mr Loukas is keen to show me his new crop - squash or kolokithi as they call it.

As he digs and gathers, he tells me his story.

"I worked as a sales representative for many years," he explains.

"So many hours in the office, so many hours in my car. Many hours lost from my life."

But those hours, those years of work did not end with happy retirement and a pension.

Instead, while still in his mid-40s, Aristotelis Loukas was made redundant.

Like so many others in Greece nowadays, perhaps 25% of the population, he found himself jobless, unable to find new work, and with a family to support.

But what Mr Loukas did have was an idea.

"I always wondered how it would be to be a farmer," he says.

"Whatever happens with the economic crisis, the sky will still be blue."

'Shocked'

He smiles at his own home-spun wisdom, but despite his rather romantic enthusiasm, Aristotelis Loukas did not simply wander off to a field and start digging.

He enrolled at the "American Farm School" in Thessaloniki, so called because it was founded by a missionary from the US early in the 20th Century - and it turned out that Mr Loukas was not alone in his ambition.

Image caption
Applications for the farm school run by Dr Kanellis have tripled in the past year

"We have had applications triple in just the past year," says Dr Panos Kanellis, the Farm School's president.

Many of those showing up have good degrees, even MBAs, but still cannot find a job in the Greece of today.

"I was shocked," Dr Kanellis says.

"They wanted to know how they can use a piece of land that their grandfather owned in a village.

"They were trying to find an alternative."

Others who study at the farm school do have jobs, but are learning how to farm as a back-up plan.

These are people like Asteria Chatziargyrou, who holds a senior position in a Greek manufacturing company.

"We are facing some problems this year, and I am not sure I will have a job next year. So farming is a possibility for me," she says.

Ms Chatziargyrou is now cultivating vegetables on land she has borrowed from a professor at the farm school.

Find out more

Paul Moss's report can be heard on
The World Tonight
on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday 27 June at 22:00 BST